Research Focus Areas

Short Biography

Catherine Polishchuk completed her BA at the University of Zurich, and her MA at the Graduate Institute Geneva in anthropology and sociology of development. In her MA-thesis, she analyzes how values that are mobilized in public discourse are reappropriated by individuals in their own ethical stance on (im-)migration. Her current work too scrutinizes the fault lines of inclusion and exclusion, as they are produced and reproduced in everyday and seemingly ordinary instances. She has obtained the Vienna Science and Research stipend and is an ÖAW Doc fellow (received April 2020).

PhD Project

Catherine’s PhD-project with the preliminary title “Participating in Urban Renewal: the curious mix of social democratic and neoliberal values” analyzes contradictions of urban renewal in Vienna, Austria. She follows the enactment of renewal policies as carried out by an Urban Renewal Office (GB*), a service facility that operates as a public-private partnership between the municipality and architectural firms. This dissertation is based on an ethnographic investigation of (the planning of) the renewal of one particular road and its accompanying citizen participation process. It scrutinizes the effects of participatory policy practices, questioning whether participatory practices lead to a more inclusive society – as commonly assumed by both planners and policymakers – and contextualizes these practices in the municipality’s institutional framework. In her analysis, Catherine brings together values, discourse, (planning) imaginaries, policy, and politics.